Right Thinking: Spreading the mediocrity

You don’t have to accept the suspect notion of the Freudian slip to believe that the stray remark can illuminate what an individual or institution genuinely believes. The light produced by these comments is even brighter when the views expressed are from an important segment of the leaders of our state’s institutions.

We witnessed such a light bulb moment this month at a meeting of the Oklahoma City School Board. The agenda item, unfortunately, was not an unusual one. Parents from Cleveland Elementary School told the board they were concerned about the reduction of the arts and science classes.

To understand the significance of the resulting dialogue, you need to know that Cleveland is considered one of the best schools in the district. It is one of the few city schools with high quality, persuading parents of young children to remain in the city instead of following their friends and family to the suburbs.

Of course, Karl Springer, the city’s superintendent of schools, expressed his empathy for the parents. But the reason he gave for the district’s decisions tells you everything you need to know about what the public school establishment believes about the priority of excellence in education. He told the parents and the board that the excellent school suffered a reduction in its arts, music, and science offerings because the district decided to redistribute these resources.

“What we’re attempting to do is provide equitable services to all our schools,” Springer said.

It is fair to wonder whether Springer misspoke. No such luck. Two years ago, Springer and the board faced similar questions from parents representing the crown jewel of the school district, the Classen School of Advanced Studies. They wanted to know why the district decided to reduce its enrollment. Why not instead invest more resources and enable qualified students languishing on a waiting list for a school nationally recognized for its excellence?

“I think the bigger issue is to work with all of our high schools so that those students all get the same quality education you get at Classen,” he said, defending the spreading of the wealth.

If this sounds sensible to you, then you don’t understand the reality of the Oklahoma City school district. This inner-city district is made up almost entirely of struggling schools serving a largely underprivileged population. The bulk of the city’s middle class has long since followed the gentry in abandoning the district for either the suburbs or private schools. Only in the last decade or two has the city succeeded in attracting the middle-class parents of young children back to the district by building a tiny handful of excellent schools such as Cleveland and Classen.

The notion that somehow, by starving the small handful of good schools of resources, that we will turn all the district schools into a Cleveland or a Classen is a fantasy.

What would motivate the district to make such self-destructive decisions? The sad fact is that the ideology of egalitarianism is so deeply rooted in otherwise well-intentioned and skilled educators like Springer that it leads them to starve their few islands of success out of fear that someone will get something that someone else didn’t. The inevitable consequence of this thinking, though, is mediocrity all around.

Andrew C. Spiropoulos is a professor of law at the Oklahoma City University School of Law and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.

One comment

The parents at Cleveland have a right to be upset. I hope they channel that frustration into productive conversations with their legislators regarding the need to begin restoring public school funding. The funding cuts have left districts balancing decisions regarding class sizes and program offerings.

I do not think Springer is “defending the spreading of the wealth”. There is no wealth to spread around. It’s more appropriately called “sharing the pain” until our Legislature begins to restore the cut funding, and support the education of all Oklahoma public school students.